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The article presents actual data which you rebut with...your feelings? "From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing

The article presents actual data which you rebut with...your feelings? "From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own." vs. "As far as I am concerned, I have not observed this."

ViktorRay 3y ago
There’s a difference between people “spending more time alone” and the articles claim that people have “stopped hanging out.” If one actually goes outside it’s trivial to see people hanging out. Also maybe ironic that I say this here on hacker news on Valentine’s Day but it’s true. Restaurants, bars and even the local mall were packed today.
- skhunted 3y ago
  I think it’s clear that the article’s author does not mean it literally that everyone stopped hanging out. It’s hyperbole.
bee_rider 3y ago
2003-2022 is also the time when it became possible to socialize without going anywhere, via the internet.
noirbot 3y ago
I can't read the article in full, but my question would be if it's excluding people on video calls and such. I'm social with people on audio or video calls 2-4 nights a week, and in-person 2-3 more nights, which is less in-person time than 20 years ago, but probably about the same or more nights per week I'm spending hours doing a social activity with friends. Is it clear that it's worse if I'm playing computer games with friends online vs. board games in person? How much is this just a panic about "but video chats are less social than sitting in a room"? In my mind, I'm more social with friends who live thousands of miles away than I would have ever been able to be before, which has allowed me to have much more lasting friendships with people now than people I was even friends with 10 years ago when video chat was far less effective.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jbm 3y ago
You raise an interesting point. I used to be convinced by purely data-based and "science"-based points, but due to overly-confident sounding statistics over the past 5 years, I've stopped paying attention to it - particularly with regards to social sciences. Unless we have cameras monitoring American men at all times, we do not know that they have reduced face-to-face socializing by 30%. What we do have is very intelligent people who are incentivized to produce research that makes waves; some of them are honest, others are not, and I don't really have the wherewithal to determine what the case is here. The reproduction crisis is real and simply accepting conclusions seems naive. If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more. So yes - it is legit for the op's feelings to be more important for op. We should applaud people for not simply accepting conclusions. (In this case, my personal feelings, for what little they are worth,is that there are a lot of people who socialize less, and I assume it is because there are more people in cities and in circumstances where hanging out is harder.)
- the_only_law 3y ago
  [dead]
  - dang 3y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jbm 3y ago
    >> If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more. > Are you fucking stupid? They’re doing just that, but in the opposite direction I don't think you read what I wrote in any attempt to understand. The argument is that a person can value their own experiences more than data, and not that their experiences are convincing to other people. It doesn't bother me that someone feels their anecdotal experience in their social circles is completely different from the data shared. The original data could be slanted, the social circle could be different, and it's an opportunity - not something that needs to be shouted down because of "the data". Even assuming the data is correct, having a potential population in which it is different would be of far greater interest than flexing about the supposed absolute truth of the data.

ViktorRay 3y ago

There’s a difference between people “spending more time alone” and the articles claim that people have “stopped hanging out.” If one actually goes outside it’s trivial to see people hanging out. Also maybe ironic that I say this here on hacker news on Valentine’s Day but it’s true. Restaurants, bars and even the local mall were packed today.

skhunted 3y ago
I think it’s clear that the article’s author does not mean it literally that everyone stopped hanging out. It’s hyperbole.

bee_rider 3y ago

2003-2022 is also the time when it became possible to socialize without going anywhere, via the internet.

noirbot 3y ago

I can't read the article in full, but my question would be if it's excluding people on video calls and such. I'm social with people on audio or video calls 2-4 nights a week, and in-person 2-3 more nights, which is less in-person time than 20 years ago, but probably about the same or more nights per week I'm spending hours doing a social activity with friends. Is it clear that it's worse if I'm playing computer games with friends online vs. board games in person? How much is this just a panic about "but video chats are less social than sitting in a room"? In my mind, I'm more social with friends who live thousands of miles away than I would have ever been able to be before, which has allowed me to have much more lasting friendships with people now than people I was even friends with 10 years ago when video chat was far less effective.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jbm 3y ago

You raise an interesting point. I used to be convinced by purely data-based and "science"-based points, but due to overly-confident sounding statistics over the past 5 years, I've stopped paying attention to it - particularly with regards to social sciences. Unless we have cameras monitoring American men at all times, we do not know that they have reduced face-to-face socializing by 30%. What we do have is very intelligent people who are incentivized to produce research that makes waves; some of them are honest, others are not, and I don't really have the wherewithal to determine what the case is here. The reproduction crisis is real and simply accepting conclusions seems naive. If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more. So yes - it is legit for the op's feelings to be more important for op. We should applaud people for not simply accepting conclusions. (In this case, my personal feelings, for what little they are worth,is that there are a lot of people who socialize less, and I assume it is because there are more people in cities and in circumstances where hanging out is harder.)

the_only_law 3y ago
[dead]
- dang 3y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. You can't attack others like this here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jbm 3y ago
  >> If a study doesn't pass the smell test, is not easily reproducible, and I have no personally trusted people who can vouch for the findings, then - yes - my feelings matter more. > Are you fucking stupid? They’re doing just that, but in the opposite direction I don't think you read what I wrote in any attempt to understand. The argument is that a person can value their own experiences more than data, and not that their experiences are convincing to other people. It doesn't bother me that someone feels their anecdotal experience in their social circles is completely different from the data shared. The original data could be slanted, the social circle could be different, and it's an opportunity - not something that needs to be shouted down because of "the data". Even assuming the data is correct, having a potential population in which it is different would be of far greater interest than flexing about the supposed absolute truth of the data.